


When Love is Used to Justify Pain

by Anonymous



Category: Historical Criminals RPF
Genre: Discussion of Rape, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Murder Planning, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-07
Updated: 2019-01-07
Packaged: 2019-10-06 02:32:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17337014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: A mix of introspection and murder planning in January of 1922.





	When Love is Used to Justify Pain

**Author's Note:**

> Richard Loeb called 'Dick' throughout. 
> 
> Title and vague idea for this one taken from two quotes in Venom (2016), Issue 150.

The hotel was dark, and this early in the morning little noise could be heard from the alleys and streets below. The tiny spark of a cigarette tip shone in the dark as Dick inhaled. He sat on the window sill in their hotel room, smoking idly as Nathan slept on the bed closest to him. They had asked for a room with two double beds, one was piled with bags and clothes, sheets neatly tucked beneath. The other bed was a mess, most of the blankets had been pushed or kicked off while Nathan slept on his stomach with a single white sheet extending just up to his knees. He snored slightly and was restless. Typical of him for the amount he’d had to drink. Dick took a long drag and blew his smoke out the window, then settled his gaze on Nathan’s back. His eyes traveled over the moles and discolorations he knew well, that he sometimes made a game of pressing in public through his clothes, innocent enough from the outside, a simple hand on his friend’s back, but something he knew drove Nathan nuts with a combination of fear and want.

He hadn’t had much chance to play his game lately. Not with their self-imposed ban from seeing each other in public. It’s why they were here now, in Detroit, the first time they’d been able to go out just the two of them since moving to Michigan. He’d missed it. Nathan had taken the opportunity to get drunker than usual, guzzling down liquor until he was noticeably giddy, almost manic, and speaking far too loudly even in the crowded club. When he began to make comments that were a little too suggestive, Dick coaxed him into going somewhere more private, not that coaxing had really been needed.

For his part, Dick hadn’t had more than a couple drinks all night, determined to make this a pleasant time for them both. But he still hadn’t been able get hard. Nathan, who seemed to have more alcohol than blood in his veins, had come twice and fallen asleep, not seeming to care that Dick had eventually stopped responding to him, actually seemed even more enthused when he went limp.

As he had been musing, Nathan had turned to his side, face now turned towards Dick at the window, and Dick watched his relaxed features. Sometimes he envied Nathan. Before they had sex for the first time, Nathan had brought up so much history, psychology, literature, as if he needed to justify the idea of homosexuality, or to make it seem like a reasonable reality for Dick to even consider it. Nathan propped himself up with these facts, tried to blaze a trail of self-satisfaction with himself despite the insecurity, doubt and loathing that Dick could now see lay just beneath his skin. But at least he knew with any certainty what he was, even if the truth repulsed him.

Sitting on the edge of the window, turning again to stare into the black sky, Dick felt adrift. When he thought of what people may think if they could see the two of them now, Dick in an open shirt and nothing else, Nathan completely naked, their messy box of a room in this sprawling city, he knew what conclusions they would jump to. To a few they would seem the archetypes of the forbidden love affair, to most they would be just a couple of pathetic fairies. Dick felt disconnected from either narrative. He and Nathan were far from fairies; the rouged-up, emaciated creatures in costume they sometimes saw parading the streets at night looking for someone to go home with. He and Nathan, they weren’t normal, but they weren’t _that_ either. And though he supposed he was technically Nathan’s lover (not a word they ever used, why should they when ‘friend’ seemed so all-encompassing, so innocent and yet strangely loaded with meaning all at once?), but he didn’t feel himself so. Being a lover seemed to imply enjoying having sex with another person, or being able to have some kind of role in the process at least, neither of which he’d been able to accomplish lately.

He stubbed out his cigarette and placed his feet on the windowsill, rested his cheek on his knees. With a tight smile he indulged in reminiscing over his semi-tragic sexual history. He’d slept with a woman and had gotten gonorrhea, slept with a man and had nearly lost his best friend and any social life he wanted to have. And now he couldn’t properly seem to satisfy anyone. Girls thought him cute but he knew it confused and worried them the amount of time it took him to climax, he knew it. And Nathan… He glanced at his face again, mouth slightly open, no doubt his breath was horrible, his mouth dry. With Nathan he felt slightly cheated. If he was going to have sex with a man, have a relationship with a man and take all that risk, shouldn’t he enjoy it? For all his trepidation and second-guessing, he knew that Nathan did. Knew that Nathan looked at this thing between them as something monumental, a thing that would change him, elevate him, make everything worthwhile if only he could keep it going. All Dick felt was hollow, in comparison.

With a sigh he closed the window and returned to their bed, fussed with the blankets they’d discarded and pulled them up. As he draped one over Nathan he groaned a bit, then fell silent again, still facing away from Dick, towards the window. Dick removed the shirt he’d been wearing, which he now realized had been Nathan’s, and lay down between the cold sheets. Hesitating only slightly, he turned to his side, lay a careful hand on Nathan’s back and kissed him lightly just at the base of his neck. It was better this way, with Nathan asleep and not able to turn around, to get excited and overpower him with the force of his need. Like this Dick could touch as he wanted, kiss and explore what he liked without having to confront the shallow depths of his desires in the face of Nathan’s ocean.

Hoping desperately that he wouldn’t wake up, Dick slid slow hands down Nathan’s back, slipped a leg under and then over one of Nathan’s legs just to see how it felt and pressed a kiss to the dip of his spine. As he shifted back up to the head of the bed, he had an urge to embrace him, and draped a tentative arm over Nathan’s side to rest on his chest. When Nathan failed to wake, he relaxed. It was nice to hold someone and not have to worry what they were thinking of you or what you would do next. Nice to be close to another warm body in the dark. After a few minutes, his arm starting to tingle with pins and needles, Dick withdrew, scooted toward his own side of the bed and fell asleep, Nathan's light snores a soothing white noise.

He could tell Nathan was awake before he opened his eyes, the room already blanketed in cigarette smoke and the weak sunlight of early morning. Less maudlin than the night before, he made a game of it, kept his eyes closed and tried to listen to determine where Nathan was in the room. When he had a guess he turned over and opened his eyes to see that he was right, Nathan had replaced him on the window ledge, taking long pulls from a stubby cigarette held between his stained fingers. Dick was somewhat surprised to see him fully dressed and looking almost grim.

“Good morning,” he mumbled, squinting into the light.

Nathan glanced at him without turning his head, then turned his gaze back out the window. “Do you remember the last time we talked about killing someone?”

Always right to business with this one. Dick pushed himself up so he was sitting against the headboard. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I do.”

“Are your thoughts the same now as they were then?”

“Depends, I guess, on the person we’re thinking about killing.”

Nathan stubbed his cigarette out in annoyance. “Same person.”

“Then yes, I feel the same.”

He watched Nathan light a new cigarette and inhale, turning to him as smoke curled from his nose. “We didn’t stop him when we should have. And now, with what he’s done to us, I think he deserves something more.”

Dick wiped hands over his face, still not completely awake. “More?”

Nathan came over to the bed and pressed the cigarette between Dick’s lips, cupped a cheek with his palm. “I think he deserves to suffer. Pain in return for the pain he’s caused.”

“What did you have in mind?” He mumbled around the cigarette that Nathan quickly took back from him.

“Rape seems the only proper punishment, wouldn’t you agree? I doubt our friend could imagine anything worse than the horrors of Sodom and Gomorrah before dying at the hands of a couple of perverts.”

He stared at Nathan. He was smoking and watching Dick’s face in return, eyes intense and his lips turned up in that peculiar half-grin he knew well. “That…would have to be your domain.” He said eventually.

Nathan smiled in earnest and threw his cigarette out the window, almost leaped onto Dick in appreciation, hands in his hair, tongue in his mouth. Between kisses he muttered: “Knew you’d see it my way, knew you’d understand. I’ve been thinking about this all the time, alone in that damn apartment without you.” Nathan pulled back and stroked Dick’s face, suddenly gentle. “When everything happened last summer, I was so afraid I was going to lose you.”

Dick had been slowly unbuttoning Nathan’s shirt during the onslaught, as he was expected to do. He looked up as Nathan shrugged the shirt off along with the tie Dick had already undone. He didn’t want to say what he was thinking, that he had never been afraid of losing Nathan. It had never even crossed his mind. For lack of anything better, he said simply: “You didn’t.”

Nathan smiled at him as he took off his pants, the line of his cock visible beneath his underclothes. “I didn’t, but I could have, and that’s the point.” With that, discussion ended for the time being.

As Nathan lay on top of him, grinding and shuddering, Dick held Nathan’s arms and found the empty place within him opening once again. In Nathan’s grunting, sweating ecstasy he saw a purity of feeling almost incomprehensible to him. The idea that their relationship was enough to kill for, to risk dying for, just to punish someone else was incredible, almost awe-inspiring. What must it be like to care so deeply? To hate so passionately? To understand your wants with any certainty at all?

When Nathan finished they lay together beneath the covers, Nathan’s head pressed to Dick’s chest and taking deep breaths, as if trying to breathe him in like a vapor. “We’ll have to do it together, you’ll need to be there when it’s happening so he understands he didn’t separate us, that we’re stronger than him,” Nathan whispered into his skin.

“Okay,” Dick said. Dick who was not strong. Dick who felt so disconnected from this boy who dug fingers into his ribs as he kissed up to his throat. Dick who only initiated a kiss when Nathan whispered: “I love you,” so he didn’t have to reply.

They hopped out the window around noon and walked to Dick’s car, leaving only semen-stained sheets as payment for their stay. Dick had been anticipating the drive back to Ann Arbor to be awkward as they prepared to close themselves off from each other again, but he found the time disarmingly engaging. Talking through this budding revenge plot he could almost forget the night before and the nights ahead, the long emptiness and confusion that kept threatening to come back. As Nathan got excited about going over why their first plan had failed, and new ways to snare their prey, Dick found himself drawn in. They chattered back and forth the whole way home, arguing, attacking each other’s plans looking for weak points, weighing the possible rewards against the possible punishments along every inch of the hypothetical way.

Sometimes he forgot that this was why they had become friends in the first place. When they talked they had a way of communicating he hadn’t found with anyone else. He’d never felt so understood, so challenged or so rewarded as when he and Nathan really got into a debate. When Dick pulled up to Nathan’s apartment they both seemed a little shocked at the idea that their exchange would have to come to an end. So naturally Dick had parked, checked the sidewalk for any students he knew, then slipped up the stairs with Nathan to the apartment where Nathan lived alone in the space they had been supposed to share.

They talked the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, ordering food so they didn’t have to worry about being seen going out. By the time Dick left it was early evening, the sun just beginning to set. They had agreed on false names to use and potential weapons, but the wide assortment of unanswered threads promised months’ worth of discussion ahead. There was how to lure him in, how to knock him out, wake him up, carry him, kill him, dispose of the body, alibis, and on and on, he grinned to himself just thinking of the puzzles they had yet to untangle.

As he reached his car and shifted into the seat, it occurred to him that this may be something he would be happy to kill for after all. The depth of Nathan’s love and obsession were still beyond him, but his friendship with Nathan, the ways they understood each other, what a beautiful thing it would be to protect and strengthen it with someone else’s sacrifice.

**Author's Note:**

> They're discussing the potential murder of Hamlin Buchman, something that actually happened in the winter of 1921-1922 but was never carried out. I thought it would be fun to see a different perspective than usual, with Nathan taking a more enthusiastic role in the planning as this one was more his idea and he had a lot more personal motive in it than he would have for the Franks murder. Also Dick sexuality stuff because it's interesting to speculate what was going on with that guy.


End file.
